Professor Douglas Johnson

Historian and devoted champion of Charles de Gaulle who explained France to the British

Douglas Johnson, who died on April 28 aged 79, devoted his career as an historian to explaining France to the British.

He did this first in his study of François Guizot, the 19th-century French politician and anglophile historian - largely forgotten by the French until Johnson reminded them of his mistresses - followed by works covering France's perception of herself, her past and her ambiguous relationships with Britain as well as with the rest of Europe.

Johnson also wrote about Charles de Gaulle, who had so thrilled him in a broadcast in 1940 that he afterwards wore a Cross of Lorraine on his school uniform. More than 25 years later, when the general came under attack in the British Press for refusing Britain entry to the Common Market, Johnson was his dogged champion; but although fascinated by the French leader's personality, he was never star-struck.

The son of a local government clerk, Douglas William John Johnson was born on February 1 1925, and educated at the Royal Grammar School, Lancaster. He was called up by the Army for a short period, when he was instructed in map reading by the poet Edmund Blunden, then was invalided out and went up to Worcester College, Oxford, as a History scholar.

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For two years he was an exchange scholar at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he became friends with the Marxist theorist Louis Althusser and the Catholic historian François Bedarida. It was at a ball for the Ecole that he met Madeleine Rebinnard, whom he married in 1949.

When he became an assistant lecturer at Birmingham University, she went to teach at the Lycée in Rouen - otherwise she would have had to pay for her study at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. This meant that Johnson made frequent visits to the city, where she lived with their daughter at the top of a steep hill. It was typical of Johnson that he noticed how middle-aged male cyclists, who would normally dismount, puffed and pedalled their way up when the the Tour de France was in progress.

He started research on King Louis-Philippe, but switched to Guizot, the king's minister, on discovering the papers still at the family home in Normandy. The resulting Guizot: Aspects of French History, 1787-1874 (1963) both re-established the Frenchman's reputation and made the name of its author, helping him to become a professor while still under 40, even though he had taken time off to teach for the Workers' Educational Association.

When Lord Annan asked him to come to University College London as Professor of French History, Johnson found himself at the centre of the English intellectual life, a position which the French Republic was to recognise by appointing him a Commandeur des palmes académiques in 1987, and a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1990 (promoted Officier in 1997).

Douglas Johnson arrived when UCL was on the threshold of its expansion into a massive international university. Becoming head of department and Dean of Arts, he fostered a period of high morale and achievement. He would approve a request for money to buy a printer with a letter of assent written in French argot, and have young lecturers presented with written examinations on the life of Maigret.

His lectures were unostentatiously delivered; once, when he appeared to be reading from notes, it was found afterwards that the text on his lectern was on a different subject.

Johnson's later books included France and the Dreyfus Affair, several on the French Revolution and a Concise History of France. He wrote An Idea of Europe with Richard Hoggart and The Age of Illusion: Art and Politics in France, 1918-1940, with his wife, who had a complementary career at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and at Camden School for Girls before becoming head of modern languages at St Paul's.

As a lover of Simenon and PG Wodehouse, Johnson was a natural journalist. He reviewed books for The Spectator, and wrote articles for New Society and Ouest-France. He was also an obituary writer and contributor to The Daily Telegraph's letters column.

In one letter he gave a witty account of the English prime minister of France, WH Waddington, whose coincidence at Rugby with the Earl of Derby, also a future prime minister, had prompted the verse: "England and France will never be matches/Till Derby and Waddington write the dispatches." After recounting Waddington's brief prime ministerial career, Johnson recorded how he had died of a broken heart six days after losing his senate seat in 1894 while ambassador in London, then commented: "He was a Frenchman, after all."

Johnson carried a crucifix in his pocket, although he was not a churchgoer. On being asked once if he liked the French, he paused, then said: "No, I don't think I can say that."